The increasingly popular Dark Web monitoring services help notify you when your personal information is leaked or is being sold on the Deep Web, Dark Web.
But what is Dark Web surveillance? How does Dark Web surveillance work? And why is it important? Let’s find out with me.
What is the Dark Web?
Before we dive into Dark Web surveillance, you must know what is Dark Web?
To understand the Dark Web, we must first understand what the internet is. The Internet is defined as a global network of interconnected devices. The Internet can be classified into three broad categories: the surface web, the deep web, and the dark web.
The Surface web is the part of the Internet that most people use every day; Its content is curated by search engines such as Google Search, Bing and DuckDuckGo. The deep web contains sensitive information about individuals and organizations such as email addresses, phone numbers, etc. This information is unmanaged and therefore cannot be accessed via search engines. You can learn more about the deep web here.
On the other hand, the Dark Web is a network of websites and forums hidden in the deep web. To access the Dark Web, you need specialized software. Learn more about how the Dark Web works here.
What is Dark Web Monitoring?
Dark Web surveillance is the process of finding hidden websites that are hard to find on the deep web to find leaked personal or business information, such as email addresses, bank accounts, credit cards, etc. This process is usually automated.
When your email address, phone number or personally identifiable information (PII) is found on the Dark Web, you will be alerted and take precautions to protect yourself. These measures may include changing your passwords if they are exposed, or replacing a new credit card, etc.
Typically, Dark Web monitoring tools scan personal information such as email addresses, phone numbers, citizenship numbers, credit card numbers, bank account numbers, and passport numbers on the Dark Web.
Stolen or leaked information is often traded on Dark Web sites and forums, sometimes freely available. All this leaked information is hidden from ordinary internet users. So it is difficult to know if any of your personal information has been leaked.
That is, of course, unless one of the companies holding your data tells you that. The truth is, most companies keep quiet if they are affected by a data breach or leak to protect their reputation and revenue. Although today reports of data breaches are still very common on secure websites.
But you don’t have to worry about the Dark Web too much, as Dark Web monitoring tools and services will take care of that for you.
How does your information get to the Dark Web?
Picture this: you receive an email from your Dark Web monitoring tool telling you that it has found one of your Dark Web logins.
If your information is found on the Dark Web, it is clear that someone has stolen your information for sale. Typically, criminals steal information by accessing companies’ database systems and then leaking the content or selling that information. This is known as a data breach or data leak, depending on how it happened.
But data breaches and leaks are just two examples of how hackers can steal your information. There are other ways hackers can obtain your data, such as through malware, phishing, or from an ATM.
How does the Dark Web monitoring tool work?
Dark Web monitoring tools include scrapers, crawlers, and scanners, scouring hundreds and thousands of Dark Web sites every day in search of your personal information. They often scour Dark Web sites that specialize in selling stolen information.
Scrapers download public data on Dark Web sites or private information trading forums, and then analyze the data to find matches.
Suppose some of your PII is found. In such event, you will be notified to take the necessary measures to protect yourself.
Do you need Dark Web monitoring service?
Because the Dark Web is hidden from ordinary Internet users and is not censored, you must not let your data appear on it. Cybercriminals can use your information to commit any crime.
As a result, you learn about data breaches and leaks because it’s nearly impossible to protect yourself from future attacks if you don’t.
Dark Web monitoring tools keep you informed so you can take measures to limit or better avoid problems like account takeovers, identity theft, breaking the law, and others. Other problems.
If you want to protect yourself, these monitoring services will give you some measures to better prepare for the worst case scenario.
Do Dark Web Monitoring Tools Work?
These services promise Dark Web monitoring all the time, so before you spend money, you should know if the monitoring service is up and running.
In fact, yes, but there are significant limitations that make these tools not as effective as you might think.
The effectiveness of a Dark Web monitoring tool is determined by how long it takes to find stolen logins. That only happens when your information is publicly disclosed on the Dark Web. In other words, if your information hasn’t been sold on the Dark Web, these tools won’t detect it. Like when hacker for sale 17GB of Vietnamese identity data then we know.
It’s always better to know about data breaches early, and so the responsibility often lies with the companies that hold your details.
Those companies may not discover a data breach for months, or worse, in some cases years.
Despite that limitation, there’s no reason not to use Dark Web monitoring tools.